


everyday magics

by adhdmollymauk



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Family Fluff, Flowers, Fluff and Angst, Gen, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 00:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14726873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhdmollymauk/pseuds/adhdmollymauk
Summary: Five times Nott didn't braid flowers into Caleb's hair, and the one time she did.Or, my feelings about how Caleb deserves all the love in the world.





	everyday magics

**Author's Note:**

> non-archive warnings: brief mention of alcoholism, panic attacks, general anxiety  
> beauyasha hints. the widomauk is not the focus but Is There  
> this fic was a fucking labor of love. i've been working on it for like. weeks now. multiple povs are Quite Hard but i really enjoyed playing with all of their muses, since I find it way too easy to write as Caleb i wanted a challenge and i damn well gave myself one. enjoy

_jester_

"You know, Nott, I know how to do some really pretty hairstyles," Jester says as she watches her friend produce a handful of flowers from pretty much nowhere. "I could teach you how to do some sometime!"

Caleb sits patiently on the ground, waiting for what's become their morning ritual. Jester thinks it's adorable, and Caleb looks so cute with his hair like this, but she's starting to get secondhand scalp pain just looking at Nott's approximation of a braid.

Much to her delight, Nott's eyes go wide and she grins, showing every one of her pointy teeth. Nott doesn't like them, but Jester thinks pointy teeth are really pretty, and Nott's smile is even prettier.

"Would you like to try today? That way you can show me how to do it!" Nott says, holding out the flowers, and Jester gives a little squeak of happiness.

"Oh my gosh _yes!_ Caleb, this is going to be so much fun, it'll be like a sleepover! You can do my hair too if you want."

"I am fairly sure last night technically was a sleepover," Caleb says. He's so cute when he's deflecting. She can tell he's enjoying himself, even if he pretends he's just letting it happen.

Jester sits crosslegged on the ground behind Caleb. Unlike Nott, she's tall enough to reach his hair without having to stand on a box, but he still has to lean back a little.

The second her hands touch his hair, she yelps. "Caleb! Do you ever wash this? Or brush it?"

"Not often, no," Caleb says. He doesn't seem at all embarrassed by this.

"Well, you're washing it now!" She stands up and looks at him expectantly. He doesn't move.

"You're coming with me to the stream or I'm carrying you there, your choice!" she says, arms crossed. He still doesn't move and just kind of stares blankly at her, so she sweeps a hand under his legs and the other around his shoulders and picks him up before he has a chance to protest.

"Wha--hey!" Caleb yells. Jester takes a second to admire the effect of her display of strength. Caleb's face is redder than a lobster, of course. Mollymauk is staring at them and smirking, and Yasha gives her a nod of respect. Fjord is staring very deliberately into his bowl of soup (he's definitely into her, obviously, she's pretty sure he's blushing) and Beau is not even trying to hide the fact that she's into this.

The only one not being gay or proud of her is Nott, who yells "What are you doing to my boy?" as she deposits him at the bank of the stream and rolls up her sleeves.

"You'll thank me later!" Jester says, pulling soap from her backpack and splashing water over Caleb's head. He splutters and shakes his head, looking very much like a wet cat. Nott winces as a few stray drops hit her.

"This will take two seconds," Jester assures them both. It takes ten minutes. He snarks at her the whole time and curses in Zemnian every time she combs out a tangle, but she gets the job done.

"Ohhh my gosh Caleb you look _beautiful!_ And I haven't even styled it yet!" Jester's tail waves excitedly as she bounces up and down on her toes.

Caleb runs a hand through his hair and makes a face, then goes to his bag.

"Ah--no mirrors until I'm done," Jester says. She's enjoying bossing him around _so_ much.

Reluctantly, he sits back down, and she quickly braids a few strands and then fashions the top half of his hair into a bun with the small braid wrapped around it, tucking chrysanthemums in around the braid. For the final touch she tucks a flower behind his ear, and she catches a smile as she does it.

"There! Beautiful," she says, admiring her handiwork.

"Not bad," Caleb mumbles as he pulls out a mirror, twisting his head at awkward angles to see what she's done to the back.

"It looks very pretty, but you're on thin fucking ice," Nott half-snarls. She's trying to be menacing but she can't hide how proud she is of Caleb.

"Nott, I'm not doubting your parenting skills, but your boy has to wash his hair sometimes."

"I'm _right here_ ," Caleb says from the ground. They both ignore him.

 

_fjord_

"I think we're gonna have to stop for the night," Fjord says, letting himself drawl a bit more than usual. Keeping the accent is second nature now, but he's exhausted and being alone with Caleb is putting him a little on edge. Not because he dislikes the man, far from it, but Caleb has a way of seeing right through bullshit--his bullshit, specifically--that's gonna become a real pain in the ass at some point.

"I don't think I could make it back to Zadash tonight either," Caleb says, sitting down on the ground in an ungraceful heap. He calls Frumpkin to him, and Fjord can't hold back a sneezing fit. Goddamn fey creatures just had to have real cat fur and set off his allergies.

"Sorry, I had forgotten the company I was keeping," Caleb says and snaps his fingers. The cat vanishes silently. Fjord sniffles and tries not to rub at his eyes.

"S'okay, you don't have to send him off for me," Fjord says, trying to be gentlemanly about it but very much hoping that Caleb will let the cat... _thing_ stay in whatever plane he gets off to for the night.

"No, no, it is quite all right. I can do without him for a few more hours." He turns a leaden box over in his hands, and Fjord hears a slight _thump_ as the arcane artifact inside settles. Retrieving it hadn't been too bad on their own: no fighting, but a shit ton of magical traps that it had taken the both of them hours to deactivate.

The sleep he gets is fitful, tense. He's avoided touching water all day but he still fears an unexpected dream from his patron; instead all he dreams of is endless cats.

They both wake early and anxious. He only realizes his hand has come up to pick at his tusks when Caleb's Mage Hand floats up to knock it away.

"You told us to stop you when you do that," he says by way of explanation, letting the spectral hand wander to his pack to start pulling out supplies for breakfast.

Fjord laughs, more than a little ruefully. "That I did, didn't I."

Caleb seems jittery, off, vibrating with nervous energy. Fjord notices that he still has wilted flowers in his hair from Nott's send-off the day before; they're practically dead, some of them starting to turn brown. Come to think of it, it probably can't be helping that Caleb is keeping Frumpkin away for his benefit. The little cat has always seemed to calm him.

"Hey, I saw some flowers over thataway last night--I'm not too good at doing hair but I could probably do it up for you," Fjord says before he can lose his nerve. He has no idea how Caleb is going to respond to this, but he wants to make it up to him somehow for the damn cat allergy.

"Oh. Sure." Caleb doesn't look up from arranging breakfast, but he doesn't seem upset. Fjord takes this as a good sign and goes over to pick a few flowers. He has no idea what they are, but they're bright, yellows and reds and oranges, and he makes sure to take a couple of each color.

"Zinnias," says Caleb, who of course knows what they are. "I actually haven't seen these since leaving the Zemni Fields."

"They match your hair," Fjord says, grinning when Caleb looks up at him in surprise. "Shall we?"

It takes him ten minutes to even figure out how to do anything with Caleb's hair. He makes several attempts, weaving strands together in random patterns and trying to make them stay, but nothing works.

"Here," Caleb says, rescuing him, and pulls his hair into a ponytail in one smooth motion. He ties it up with something that's been on his wrist this whole time, in a way that's an absolute mystery to Fjord. Self-conscious, Fjord picks up the handful of flowers and slides them all into Caleb's hair. It's pulled tight; the stems weave easily around the top of his head and down the sides, stopping at the ponytail, and when he's finished Caleb has a halo of red and gold.

"Now, I'm no fashion expert, but I think this is what you might call a Look," Fjord says as he hands over the little mirror Caleb keeps in his pack.

Caleb laughs, sounding almost delighted. "I think you have made me some kind of harvest deity. You should have Jester teach you a thing or two about this stuff." He's got a smirk on his face that says he knows exactly what he's saying.

Fjord studiously ignores his face heating up and bites back several remarks about a certain other tiefling. They walk back to the city in companionable silence, Fjord tucking a stray flower behind his ear.

 

_beau_

Beau wakes up disoriented. Pretty much all of them had partied a little too hard last night, and she groans as her hangover makes itself known.

"Ugh, my mouth feels like I've been eating someone's faux fur trimmed cloak--Jester?"

There's no response, but she does feel a warm body next to her.

"Wh--" She tries to sit up and is rewarded with a stabbing headache. Defeated, she flops onto whoever is asleep next to her with a groan.

"Beau?" the other person mumbles into the pillow.

"Caleb? Why the fuck are you in my bed."

"Fuck. I think I fell asleep while we were talking." Caleb sounds exhausted but considerably less hungover, since his voice doesn't sound like a frog ate his vocal cords. Speaking of, ow, sore throat.

"We were? Oh wait!" It's coming back now. And boy is it embarrassing. She's pretty sure she cried at least twice.

"Ugh. Gods. Can we uh. Never speak of that again."

"Which part, the part where you drunkenly rambled to me about your childhood or the part where you said you wished you had a brother like me?" He's sitting up now, and he looks absolutely devious. He's fucking worse than Jester right now.

"All of them? And the--holy shit your hair." Beau bursts out laughing as she sees the back of it. Half of it is pulled up into a high ponytail, the other half is in the messiest braid she's ever seen.

"Yeah, I was incredibly patient with you last night, you know." He winces and starts trying to detangle it without looking.

"I can't believe you let me do that. Also, drunk me, what the hell."

"You had some convoluted reason for why you had to, and then you forgot about the second half and started talking about how cool dragons are."

"Yeah... yeah, that sounds like me. Dude, at least let me fix it, I'm the one who fucked it up." She unties the ridiculously tight knot he's been struggling with and wraps her hair tie back around her wrist. Spotting a vase of flowers on the inn's nightstand, she grins and sets it down on the floor next to them.

"Oh, are we doing this now?" Caleb says wryly, and bends his head a little out of habit. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Sober Beau's hands are considerably more practiced at braiding than Drunk Beau's. (To be fair, hand-eye coordination is pretty much always the first to go.) Caleb's hair is wavier than hers and a little coarser; she's used to longer hair that slips through her fingers, but his holds anything she does to it. It's quick work to give him a little crown of braids around his head, merged together into a little ponytail in back. Carefully, she pulls blue periwinkles from the vase, the only flowers in the arrangement that weren't huge and gaudy, and slips them into the braids. She might have been teasing before, but blue really does suit Caleb--his eyes look brighter next to the little flowers, or maybe it's just something in his expression.

"You are not terrible at this, you know," Caleb says, trying to see all of her handiwork in the tarnished little mirror. She smiles, or tries to, but she knows it's failed when Caleb turns and visibly jumps. " _Mein gott,_ I take it back, please stop smiling at me!"

Well. She tried.

 

_molly_

"Catch _this_ ," Nott yells in her scratchy voice. Beau's hair is already coming undone from its messy bun as she races after the ball, and Molly grins and starts a mental countdown before they start to play this game with crossbow bolts.

It's a day too beautiful to be indoors. Their "family picnic"--spearheaded by Jester, who else--is in full swing by now, with the sun high overhead. By pure chance they've found a grove of trees not far from the city, yellow flowers in full bloom making a canopy over their heads. Molly's already kicked off his shoes and draped his coat over a rock; he's thinking of ditching the shirt next, just to see who can still look him in the eye.

As usual, there's organized chaos all around him. Jester and Yasha are sprinting barefoot in the grass, so close that he can't tell if they're racing or trying to get somewhere together. Fjord has joined Nott and Beau's convoluted game, which now seems to involve trying to hit the ball very hard with a large branch. Caleb, bless him, is sitting in a patch of sunlight reading a book, but he looks more relaxed than usual, at least. He considers joining the game or the race for a moment, but Mollymauk Tealeaf has always been one to do exactly what he wants, and what he wants right now is to just sit and take all of this in.

Sometimes he envies Caleb his memory. But then he thinks, to have all those facts and histories and bits of arcane lore filling up the empty spaces wouldn't be the way he wants to do things. But Mollymauk remembers, too, as much as he can of the two-and-some years he has: the pattern on a carnival visitor's cloak, the sound of a voice overheard on the streets, the smell of Jester's perfume or the texture of Yasha's hair or the smile Fjord gets when he's excited. And moments like these. He watches them all, the sound of Jester's laughter as she runs, the moment Beau's hair succumbs to gravity, the way the sunlight hits Caleb and the trees frame him.

He wants to memorize it all, to take just a moment and then join back in, but he keeps getting stuck on Caleb. The sun brings out all the highlights and undertones of his hair, brightens his eyes, and he's got a few of the yellow flowers from the trees stuck in his hair and on his shoulders that he still hasn't noticed. He's ridiculously, irritatingly beautiful.

"Heeey, Molly," Nott says, and he blinks and realizes he's been staring. "I think the flowers here would look really pretty on Caleb, don't you?"

The little goblin is way too observant for her own good. "I s'pose so, why?" he says in a carefully practiced imitation of nonchalance.

"Well, y'see, my hands are getting super cramped from this stickball game we made up..."

"Give me something and I'll do it for you," Molly says immediately, and Nott glares and then gives him a pretty rock she must have picked up here. "That'll do." It's become a game with them. He's taken a real liking to her, despite her odd tendencies, and apparently she trusts him enough to let him play hairstylist, which is sweeter and more meaningful than she probably means it to be.

Caleb looks up from his book as he approaches. "So I see you've been delegated today," he says, neatly marking his place with a worn bookmark and putting the book back in his pack with a practiced motion. "Go on then, do your worst."

"Why, Caleb, I'm hurt! Don't you trust me?" Molly is already weaving strands of the little yellow flowers together, making a small circle and then another. He catches Caleb watching his hands and smirks, showing a little more fang than necessary.

"Debatable," Caleb teases back, and then does something that actually throws Molly off: he moves closer. The motion is honestly too cute for its own good--he scooches himself back on his hands until he's situated almost between Molly's crossed legs, then leans back onto his elbows. Mollymauk is forced to confront several feelings he's been avoiding, all at once, but also he's just delighted because Caleb's head is in his lap and he gets to _touch_ Caleb, specifically his hair, and he's going to remember every second of this.

Carefully, he twists part of Caleb's hair into a bun, then another. "What are you doing to my hair," Caleb says, and Molly just laughs and wraps the flowers around the two buns, then spends more time than he rightfully should finger-combing the tangles out of the rest of it.

"These are acacia trees, you know," Caleb is saying, and it's hard to pay attention because Caleb is also kind of leaning back into his touch like a cat, so he just makes an affirmative noise and pretends he isn't done yet. And gods it is _so_ cute that Caleb knows that.

Finally he lets his hands drop, expecting Caleb to pull away, but instead he says "Can you move your legs, your knees are stabbing me" and pulls his book back out. Molly leans back, stretching his legs out, and he hears Caleb sigh and then, inexplicably, lie back down with Molly's lap as a pillow. He just stays there, reading, and Molly has a moment of panic before he catches Yasha's eye and she mouths " _get it_ " and then he has to hold back a mildly hysterical giggle. It wasn't how he had planned to spend the rest of the picnic, but he enjoys it thoroughly all the same.

 

_yasha_

This is definitely going on Yasha's list of worst weeks ever. It figures that the week she decides to stick with the Mighty Nein is also their worst possible run of bad luck. It's getting harder and harder to avoid the war with Xhorhas, and even worse, they keep running into monster situations they're barely equipped to handle. Nowhere on this stretch is safe; they're constantly being chased or hunted or running into traps. They're a full day's journey from the nearest proper town, with one health potion between them and barely enough uninterrupted sleep to maintain their spell slots, and everyone is starting to fall apart.

"Yash, I'm _fine_ ," Molly says for the third time. He so clearly is not. None of them are, but at the moment Mollymauk especially is not, since he's currently trying to tell her that he will be taking _all_ the watch shifts tonight and she knows for a fact he hasn't slept more than a couple of hours.

They're all coping, barely. She's observed them, all of them, but she doesn't know how to help, what to do to make it better. Jester cries--quietly, when she thinks no one is listening--and she draws, and asks the Traveler for help. Fjord isn't sleeping much either, and his tusks, which had been growing out to little visible nubs, are chipped and filed all the way down; she keeps seeing his mouth bleed, whether from that or from a more arcane cause. Beau is angrier than normal, whacking at trees with her staff and screwing up her face in a way that makes Yasha's heart ache. Nott drinks her feelings away, keeping herself in a perpetual state of numbness. Yasha doesn't think she's seen her sober in days. This morning, she didn't even bother to braid Caleb's hair in its customary floral hot mess, mumbling something about it not even working.

And Caleb. Yasha is holding on the best of all of them, and she thinks maybe she could do something for Caleb. She's always felt that the two of them understood each other; the nuances of social interaction are lost on both of them, and when Caleb goes silent and withdraws into himself, Yasha knows the place he's gone to.

"Molly, you're sleeping if I have to knock you out myself, and I'm taking watch. End of." He wants to take care of them, she thinks, or perhaps he is just afraid to sleep.

"First shift, and then I promise I will let you take the rest."

"Fine. But don't think I was kidding about knocking you out." She hefts her sword in her hand, pointing the hilt at him and laughing when he winces.

Caleb isn't anywhere in camp, and Yasha bites back a stab of panic. Telling herself that nothing has happened to him, that he wouldn't go far, she slips away and searches.

She finds him sitting with his back to a tree, Frumpkin around his shoulders. His eyes are blank, empty, and she knows he's gone somewhere else, a place it hurts to touch. There's lavender growing in a haphazard patch nearby, and she sits down beside it, silent. Caleb's breathing is ragged, his knuckles white against the dirt.

"Caleb?" she says quietly. He blinks, trying to shrug off the panic, but she knows it won't work. "Breathe with me, okay?"

She takes him through breathing exercises, calm voice leading him back to being grounded. Tucks a sprig of lavender into his hand. Breathes again.

"Sorry," Caleb gets out, voice only shaking a little.

"Nothing to apologize for. Want to talk about it?" It's a pleasantry, something she knows she's supposed to say, but he isn't ready and she knows it.

He turns the sprig of lavender over and over and shakes his head.

"Want me to... do your hair? It's falling in your face." _And Nott is falling apart and so are you and maybe this will make it okay again._

"Sure," he says, and so she does, firmly pulling it back into a French braid and weaving lavender into the strands. It's second nature to her by now, from doing her own hair and sometimes Molly's, and it suits Caleb. He looks different, elegant somehow, and a little more confident.

When they run into a traveling merchant selling healing potions and real food, and when they manage to avoid any monsters, and when they all finally fall in a heap onto the one real bed they can afford, Yasha wonders. And she only lets herself relax when Nott fusses over Caleb's hair again and the next day he's smiling.

 

_nott_

It's raining the day Nott realizes she has a family.

It takes her the longest out of any of them to warm up to everyone (barring Caleb, of course), and even when she has she pretends for a while that she still hasn't. But gradually, it's little things: the easy kindness they show her even once they know her past, the gentle teasing from some and genuine concern from others, but most of all it's the way they treat Caleb that makes her trust them.

Caleb is her boy, and her top priority is his safety and happiness at all times. And eventually, she realizes that's pretty high on the rest of the group's priority list too.

It's easiest to see it with Beau at first. She's an awkward mess of a person, but so is Nott and so is Caleb, and when she says "that's fucked up, you know that, right?" Nott knows she means what was done to him and not what he's done. She doesn't treat him any differently after she knows. Nott watches her like a fucking hawk at first, ready for any off-color jokes or anything rude or out of line, but if anything she's gentler with Caleb, in the way she knows how to be. One morning at an inn she's already left, rolling her eyes at Beau passed out with her legs thrown over Caleb, and when he comes downstairs with his hair in an elaborate braid crown she knows whose work it was.

The others are equally kind, and as days turn into weeks turn into months she starts to forget to watch them all for any slip-ups, stops being afraid that they will hurt Caleb. That they will hurt her. She starts to let herself be happy with them, to have sleepovers with Jester and let Molly teach her how to do makeup and seek out Yasha for comforting silence.

It's raining, and Nott's tongue sticks out in concentration as she puts the finishing touches on a crown of hydrangeas. Her height lets her fit under the cart easily, but the others are not so lucky. Caleb and Frumpkin wear identical looks of disgust, two sets of ginger hair dripping onto the rocks, and she smiles and puts the fondness she feels into the flowers. She can't do many spells, not like Caleb can, but she thinks this is a kind of magic, too: a protection charm, her love woven into the petals to keep him safe.

And then she finds herself thinking that the rest of her dumb terrible family deserves flowers too. Even though Beau has a smudge of mud on her cheek that she hasn't noticed for a good hour, and Yasha gets a weird look on her face every time lightning hits, and Molly is spinning around like a dumbass with his shirt off because he likes the rain and also showing off, and Jester is loudly complaining about her new dress getting ruined and Fjord is trying to whittle soaked wood to give his hands something to do. They're a bunch of idiots, and she loves all of them.

She makes six crowns, and breathes a little easier knowing they will all be safe that day.

**Author's Note:**

> all the flowers are Heavily Researched and have specific meanings because i'm secretly a victorian dandy on a fainting couch somewhere  
> you can also find me on [tumblr](http://adhdmollymauk.tumblr.com/) and [twitter!](twitter.com/adhdmollymauk)


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